DID Splitting

[HelenB]

I just wanted to add quickly that one thing which has really brought me back to not being so massivly self destruct in those angry places too has been just really looking at myself and realising that I really was "just a little girl". All this anger, self hatred and blame, I know I could never put on any other child, who just so desprately wanted to be loved, and so often when I end up in that self destruct place my therapist really helps remind me and questions me if that means all children deserve what it was I went through and if that is really OK. I do not know if there is any way you can help the 20 year old part of yourself really see yourself with some kind of compassion too, but know that you are such a caring and compassionate person towards so many other people, and realy hope that you are also able to access this and bring it in to that 20 year old part too, so that she really can begin to see that you really deserve so much more, and really do not deserve the anger which she is so much trying to put on you.

Helen

 

[Echo]

@HelenB - thank you for trusting me to write all this down here. It does really help me to understand; I just hope it doesn't end up triggering or upsetting you just before bedtime. I won't write at length now, except to say thank you so much. I am really very glad you have found this safe connection that works for you. I also feel that my route to safety will be to hand over the worst of it and the complexity of it, when I am overwhelmed. It feels like a whole army of archangels is going to have to be drafted in!!

Let us both have some rest tonight and come back to this during the daytime. Blessings to you, Echo

 

[HelenB]

Praying for those archangels to be really surrounding and protecting you tonight and hope you are able to sleep well, as I also really should be trying to do.

I hope it has helped and that you did not mind me writing so much about it all to you.

Good night
Helen

 

[Echo]

@HelenB - the horror of what our young selves had to put up with is just so appalling. I think it just goes on shocking and will never not do so. It seems so hard that you have to deal with all these different parts and their pain all at the same time. I guess that is what is coming to me, too. I've just got the one at the moment, but all the childhood stuff is still to come up and I feel it will only be even more incomprehensible and terribly hurtful as it comes down to facing what my parents did. Anyway, best to hand it all over for now.

I really am immensely grateful for your help and wish you a very peaceful night's rest. Echo

 

[HelenB]

I am immensly grateful for yours too, and really do not know how I would have got through last night without it.

Good night
Helen

 

[Echo]

I have just now (10.30pm) finished the long, complicated piece of work for one client, with the prospect of the weekend only to finish the next complicated piece. I am rigid with pain and exhaustion, but as always happens, I've put so much effort into avoiding my screaming parts, they come up with frightening vengeance the second I finish work. I've started shaking very markedly and the wobbling is coming up in strong waves from my feet up to my neck. I feel like I'm being strangled. Always the strangling again when I've pushed myself too hard and too far. The re-emergence is always so brutal. I don't seem to have any handle on it. Always when I am on my knees.

I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get any sleep but I'd better try everything in my wardrobe of grounding techniques in the hope something works.

So tired of all the fighting and the immense effort to keep going. Too many triggers at the moment. Though my therapist says this is the worst period and everyday is another day further away from the trauma. Fighting to find positives.

 

[HelenB]

I am so sorry to hear that things are so hard for you with all the screaming parts. I know I can relate so much to the way they come up with such a vengence after fighting so hard to keep them all down, and then know that I am so exhausted from the keeping them down, that I am in an even harder place to deal with them.

I am really hoping you can speak some reassurance and safety into those parts, and that they can know you are there and are listening, and that they can have safety too and am praying for peace for you with everything which is going on.

Helen

 

[maryel42]

Hugs for you, if it's okay.

Thinking of you and sending restful, calm, and peaceinducing gibes your way.

 

[Echo]

Thank you, @HelenB and @maryel42 - thank you so much for taking time to respond. It is all so new in one way, though, of course, has been there since the beginning of my life. The thoughts that emerge are not new; they are just so much more acknowledged and brought up so much more clearly to consciousness. I guess I had no words at two weeks old.

I won't say anything at length because it is past bedtime and calm is the aim, of course, just now. My therapist does not want me to deal with any of this at the moment. She feels I am just not safe enough but all of this has so much force and it wants to be heard. I feel very confused about how to deal with it and I loathe stuffing it all down inside again, because it is very uncomfortable, it doesn't work and the lid no longer fits. But I have to accept her professional assessment that I am not prepared to face it all yet. I just hope it doesn't wipe me out or catch me so unawares that I have no idea what to do and no-one to turn to for help at that point.

I worry also that I will endlessly find reasons not to face it or completely conversely will rush ahead and implode. It seems so unnatural not to deal with things when they appear problematic.

Anyway, this is not the business of the hour and I must to bed, perchance to dream (hopefully nothing too lively). I wish you both peaceful times, too, and a break in this difficult period in our lives. Thank you again for listening.

 

[HelenB]

I am glad calm is in the air for you and really hope you can sleep well tonight.

I hope you can just continue to be honest with your therapist about the things which are coming up, and really do believe that the most important thing is to trust your instuncts. I do believe you will know when you are ready, and though it is hard, know that knowing in yourself when it is the right time is so important. It doesn't have to be rushed and things will come up when they need to, and I am praying you can find the safety to release all you do need to at this time. I don't know if you draw at all, but that is one way I sometimes try and use when I just can't express it in any other way, and in many ways for me I find it contained enough to be able to be helpful, and that way just the things which do need to come up do. I certainly am no artist and the things I draw are not for any display or anything, just a form of expression when the words are too hard and can be as deep as I am ready for. I am not going to pretend it is easy but I do know it is so important to build more trust with those other parts when there is still so much screaming and going on inside me and that that is one way to let that voice be heard a bit more.

That said tonight I am pretty much in meltdown and not dealing with those voices at all, but I do know it is still so important, and am trying when I am not so much in the place I am in, and suppose its not a wonder really that it feels so hard again when I have voiced and been so open about so much today.

One day this will be over and I do like what your therapist said about being one day further from the trauma, and know that my therapist also really encourages me that I will get though, and that though it is hard it will bring freedom and really am trying to keep hold of that.

Hope you sleep well.
Helen

 

[Echo]

@HelenB - well I failed on the calm front. I did get 4 hours sleep but the palpitations woke me and prevented me going back to sleep, I suppose, when the sleep herbs stopped working.

I am glad you have found a way of dealing with things by turning to art. I haven't found a way yet. I feel rather stifled by it all at the moment. If I have a conversation about some things with a friend, I end up getting badly triggered and there is a lot I don't feel I can say yet. My therapist discourages me from doing the same with her; let's me say a little but, in trying to keep me from getting triggered, intervenes to teach me grounding techniques. Some of the stuff I don't feel ready to talk to her about anyway. And it may seem stupid but writing about it on here or even in my own rape diary has the same effect.

Added to all of this is my strong resistance to diaries anyway. I used to keep them as a child, but my mother never had any compunction about reading them (she felt she had every right as my mother), so now I am policing anything I have written for fear of her getting her hands on it. So I am thinking all the time about the effect on her and whether she would believe me and how she would react. It is really getting in the way. She lives nowhere near me and has no keys to my flat. But my constant thought is what if I die? How would I ensure she wouldn't get her hands on it? I do keep it in an envelope addressed to a friend who has agreed to destroy it should I die or get hospitalised, and I did ask one of my sisters to ensure it gets posted before my mother gets her hands on it, but somehow I can see that plan going to pot should that day ever dawn. This all sounds really paranoid, but I suppose it stems from all the old fear and abuse. And from the fact that boundaries were/are routinely disregarded in my blood family, which is the root of the problem of abuse anyway. Round in circles. I know it wouldn't matter what anyone thought if I was dead anyway, but that doesn't stop the fear.

My mother is ruthless when she wants to know something. She always has been. When I was eight and she caught my father interferring with me, instead of turning anger at him, she immediately pinned me up against the wall by my neck very angrily and said, "Let's see whether you are still a virgin," and inserted her finger inside me very roughly. That was when I lost the ability to walk for several days and went totally rigid. I guess this is one of the reasons why her anger is still so frightening to me on some deep level, even though she is an old woman now, though fully compos mentis and still running around very healthily at 81.

 

[Pietro]

After reading through this thread, just have to say how moved I am by what everyone here is going through, and how y'all are fighting so hard to deal with it. I am ever grateful for, and humbled by, the incredible people I encounter on this forum.

I wanted to ask if any of you have found your younger selves to be in denial or to be lying, even. I feel like I have found such a confused part of me, perhaps, and therefore, a source of my own inner confusion.

There is a theory -- and I stress theory -- that some of our "parts" are protectors. These are parts "born" at or around the time of trauma that help to repress the memories of trauma in order to protect you from them.

The protectors can be very difficult to deal with, and even hostile and vitriolic. Sometimes it's because they are very immature, having been "born" as young children with only a child's understanding of how to protect you -- for example, the "inner critic" people sometimes mention. But it can also be because they sense you are trying to get past them and find what they hide. They were "born" to keep you alive and will fight like hell to keep you away from what they feel will hurt you.

As others here have said, having compassion for these parts, their role, pain, and plight, will help -- if you can. It takes quite some emotional strength to deal with some of these parts, especially those that advocate self-harm. It sounds like you have a wonderful therapist who understands all of this and can help you. :)

As far as being embarrassed by the "splitting", I had a bit of a splitting incident just this week, at my therapy appointment. I was quite embarrassed. :) But not anymore. The ability to be directly in touch with one's "parts" can be a gift, as long as they are not in control. And that's what this has become for me.